NATO Ministers Will Discuss the Lack of Arms Standardization

The defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this week will tackle the alliance's oldest and most complex internal problem: the financial waste and military weaknesses arising from duplication and lack of standardization in weapons and equipment.

A recent State Department report asserts that the allies: waste between $10‐billion and $20‐billion annually because of duplication and lack of standardization.

The alliance's conventional, military strength, the report states, “is far below the standlard we and our European al‐, lies should expect from the: more than $90‐billion per year! that together we spend on gen‐, neral‐purpose forces.”

The issue is familiar to the defense ministers, who will, meet in Brussels on May 22 land 23. Since the nineteen‐fifties, politicians and soldiers; (have called for standardization! of arms and equipment.

The major reason for the difficulty, NATO sources agree, is that the United States, France, West Germany, Britain and Italy are rivals in the weapons market.

Deep disagreements over military doctrine, reflecting national strategic requirements, are a second reason why standardization has not progressed beyond a handful of projects.

The American report gives, detailed descriptions of waste and duplication.

Thomas A. Callaghan Jr., president of EX‐IMTECH of Arlington, Va., began prepaying the report last year for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and for the Air Force Advanced Research Projects Agency. Data was gathered from hundreds of civilian officials, soldiers, sailors and airmen in NATO countries.

The problem has been given new urgency by the economic recession and the growing strength of the Soviet‐led Warsaw Pact forces in eastern Europe.

Theoretically, NATO's position in northwest Europe is strong. The Americans, West Germans and British deploy well ‐ trained, well ‐ equipped ground and air forces. The French are quietly returning to a de facto military integration in the alliance.

In the field NATO is less impressive. The report points out that 12 armies have 13 different types of close‐range weapons, 6 kinds of short‐range missiles, 7 medium‐range missiles and 5 long‐range missiles.

The variety is even greater at sea, where the alliance faces a growing soviet Navy. NATO navies employ 36 different types of radar, 8 kinds of surface‐to‐air missiles and 40 varieties of heavy guns.

The United States, Britain and West Germany now rely on the Phantom F‐4 for interceptor, reconnaissance and strike missions. But Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium have been shopping for a new fighter for the nineteen‐eighties.

The variety of NATO weapons, an intelligence analyst in Brussels argued, “gives the [Warsaw] Pact people a definite advantage.

“They have one main battle tank, the Soviet T‐62,” he said. “The Poles are as familiar in its repair and maintenance as the Czechs. Doctrine need not be adjusted because of differences in speed and firepower in tanks. With us, that is a constant concern.”

Such diversity, most general officers believe, could be disastrous in a war. Admiral Sir Peter Hill‐Norton, chairman of NATO's military committee. noted that in exercises many allied aircraft marked as “destroyed” had been hit by alliance defensive forces because of a lack of communication with ground defenses.

In a war setbacks to alliance forces in northwest Europe—resulting from shortages of the various ammunition, spare parts and some items of fuel and lubricants—might prompt an early recourse to tactical nuclear weapons.

These considerations, military men contend, are more important than the financial waste from duplication.

Sir Peter estimates that the alliance “is probably losing something in the region of $2‐billion a year by duplication of research and development of weaponry and associated equipment.”

The waste and military weakness can be overcome, the American report argues, only by a United States initiative for an alliance common market, for defense. This would include cooperation in research and development and open procurement procedures that would end protectionist policies.

The United States, under this proposal, would repay every European dollar spent in America on defense with an American dollar spent in Europe.

The report recommends that the trans‐Atlantic allies agree to purchase $2‐billion in arms annually from each other during three years.

One result would be longer production runs and a consequent cut in unit costs. The next generation of tanks, it was argued, would each cost one‐third of the currently estimated $1‐million if they were purchased by as many as 10 alliance nations.

Military purchases now are governed by the offset principle, under which the costs of maintaining American and British forces in West Germany, for instance, are offset by Bonn's arms purchases in the United States and Britain.

The report argues that in a military market of $70‐billion a year, a balance could be achieved over a period of years in which the best weapons of an alliance member would be purchased by all the others.

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A version of this archives appears in print on May 19, 1975, on Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: NATO Ministers Will Discuss the Lack of Arms Standardization. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe